October 7, 1999
Dear Everyone:
Things are heating up at work.
We have two major projects going on.
One is, of course, the quest for a new
Records
Management software application.
We are currently at the stage where we have sent a copy of our
data, in the form of 137 text files, to the vendor.
They have converted this data to their system, at least in part.
This conversion is a test.
During this test phase, we will make all the mistakes and figure
out all the corrections before we do the actual conversion.
This is also the phase in which the vendor says
things like, “Oh, by the way, we need a floor plan of every one of your
‘storage rooms’, complete with the actual configuration of every shelf
(how many boxes across, how many high, how many deep) in each room.
And we can’t tell you how long your conversion will take or when
we can expect to start until you give us this information.”
Like, they couldn’t have mentioned this a couple of months ago?
No, it’s a “drop everything and do this right now” sort of thing.
In other words, situation normal.
The other big project has to do with
Iron
Mountain. Iron Mountain
is sort of the Bill
Gates of the records management world.
They have more commercial records storage facilities than
(probably) any other company in the world.
Plus they keep acquiring other records management companies.
I know of one person who worked for a records storage company.
When Iron Mountain bought out his company, he stuck it out for a
little while, but ultimately decided that he just didn’t want to work
for Iron Mountain.
So he went to work for another records management
company. Sure enough, Iron
Mountain bought that one, too.
So he moved on and, you guessed it.
Finally, he went to work for the city of
Oakland.
During an ARMA seminar last
Spring, held in the Oakland City Council chambers (thanks to this
individual), there was a rumor flying around that Iron Mountain had just
acquired yet another records management company and was planning on
buying the city of Oakland, too.
Anyway, Iron Mountain also has a consulting service
that we hired to help us clean up the data that we have in our own
records management system.
This involves finding (as an example) all the different ways that people
abbreviate “invoices” and standardizing on one choice.
Iron Mountain has a proprietary program that converts all the
variations to the standard choice automatically.
Once they clean up the data for a particular
department or Operating Company, they send the files to me and I import
them into our existing records management system.
Since this can only be done when no one else is in the system, it
means that I’m going to be working weekends from now until the end of
the year. But hopefully,
only an hour or two each weekend.
However, if you look closely, you can see that
these two projects are on a collision course.
We’re making all kinds of changes that aren’t part of what we
sent the vendor. And time
spent on the Iron Mountain project is time that can’t be spent on the
changing systems project.
Ultimately, the Iron Mountain project will have to be put on hold until
after we convert to the new system.
And we won’t know when that will be until I finish that little
two-week “drop everything” physical configuration of all the storage
rooms mini-project.
Film at eleven.
In the meantime…
Hallelujah!!!
The
Salvation Army finally came by this week and took away the old
appliances. My patio is my
own again. And I love the
new appliances. Take the
washing machine. In the old
machine, if I wanted to wash two bath towels and two hand towels, the
question was always: Is this
a medium load or a large load?
With the new washer, their idea of “medium” is eight towels.
I’m not sure I even own that many anymore.
Onward…
Working weekends does not mean always having to say
you didn’t see a movie because you had to work.
It just takes planning.
And “Jeannie” driving like a bat out of hell because I said to be
at my place by 12:30 and she thought that meant leaving her place at
12:30.
Double
Jeopardy.
The Count
of Monte Cristo meets
Les Miserables.
A person is unjustly convicted and imprisoned for a crime she
didn’t commit, specifically, the murder of her husband.
When she realizes that she was set up, she sets out to exact
revenge (Count of Monte Cristo).
But, she’s skipped out on her parole and is being hounded by her parole
officer (Les Miserables).
So it’s chase the missing husband while avoiding being caught by
the parole officer.
Thoroughly predictable, except for one memorable
scene involving a ferry boat and a very unfortunate little red car.
Random
Hearts. A plane
crash leads to the discovery that somebody’s wife has been cheating on
him with someone else’s husband.
Harrison
Ford plays the wronged husband who wants desperately to find out
When And How It All Went Wrong.
Kristen Scott Thomas plays the wife who just as desperately doesn’t
want to know anything about it and, being a congressperson, running for
re-election, doesn’t want anyone else to find out, either.
It’s the old Irresistible Force meets the Immovable
Object formula. They have
nothing in common (except infidelity) and don’t much like each other, so
of course, you know where this is heading.
At least, in the end, they chose the high road.
And the New England Autumn foliage is pretty.
Both are skip-able, unless you have nothing better
to do. Hollywood is just
marking time until
Oscar season opens.
Love, as always,
Pete
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